Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

capitalnewyork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 199 posts

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#101

Post by stormbrew »

derefr wrote: post #25
smegel wrote: post #13

This might be the first good move Yahoo has made since Mayer took over. I can't think of a better example of a company that needs to shed worthless baggage and focus on high value propositions. And I am gobsmacked Yahoo has not at least made an attempt at a real social network. They have hundreds of millions of users, at the point they are in giving all their users an automatic account on Yahoo Social might be a dick…

They've already got Tumblr; they just need to... do something, anything at all with it, rather than just letting it sit there. Integrate Yahoo's various news properties into the feed, and vice-versa. Make all of the commenting on every Yahoo property into gradual-engagement reblogs on a Tumblr blog you're not even realizing you're creating as you're creating it. Etc.

This would be a disaster of epic proportions. Tumblr has a rabid user base that's not interested in any of that and would scream bloody murder if it happened.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#102

Post by arel90 »

#)WATCH BOX OFFICE MOVIE NOW!! Find the Film click here MOVIE FREE https://t.co/nLGLMehTaI & here TV MOVIE SHOWS https://t.co/zJWRHf75RF

*)My website provides a lot of movie box office include: Jurassic World Trailer (2015) The Stanford Prison Experiment Trailer (2015) Ex Machina Trailer (2015) Ant-Man Trailer (2015) The Wedding Ringer Trailer (2015) Child 44 Trailer (2015) Poltergeist Trailer (2015) Aloha Trailer (2015) Faith of Our Fathers Trailer (2015) Terminator Genisys Trailer (2015) Mad Max Fury Road Trailer (2015) Jupiter Ascending Trailer (2015) The Age of Adaline Trailer (2015) Cinderella Trailer (2015) The DUFF Trailer (2015) Entourage Trailer (2015) Danny Collins Trailer (2015) Bedlam Trailer (2015) Southpaw Trailer (2015) Little Boy Trailer (2015) Chappie Trailer (2015) Zon 261 Trailer (2015) Maggie Trailer (2015) Rage Midsummer's Eve Trailer (2015) Tomorrowland Trailer (2015) Anegan Trailer (2015) Ex-Free Trailer (2015) Insectula! Trailer (2015) Inside Out Trailer (2015) McFarland Trailer (2015) and many other box office movies

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#103

Post by tptacek »

snorrah wrote: post #30

What the fuck is a content vertical?

"Content vertical" is the term Yahoo uses to describe the major sections of the programmed content (as opposed to search, or mail, or Tumblr, or whatever) on their site.

It's tricky for Yahoo to communicate about how its business works, because Yahoo is the oldest and largest "portal" site, and so by design it tries to do (and milk revenue from) everything it can. Their business is complicated at a fundamental level by design, because sometime during the late 1990s, someone running Yahoo came to believe that the whole Internet was a kind of land grab, and the winner was going to be to the Internet what AOL was to, I don't know, the Internet for people who didn't know what the Internet was.

Since they're a huge public company, they have to communicate facts about their business to investors, with some precision, and so they expose you to terms like these.

A non-crazy way to think about Yahoo is like a magazine publisher that also owns a couple somewhat popular applications (mail, search). The "content verticals" are the magazines.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#104

Post by lotso »

AznHisoka wrote: post #6

What about Yahoo Answers? I hate seeing their results show up in the top 3 when I do a Google search. They're always low quality and not useful.

I've definitely found Yahoo Answers often useful. I'd argue Yahoo Answers is probably more helpful for the average person than Quora.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#105

Post by Scoundreller »

Scoundreller wrote: post #15
AznHisoka wrote: post #6

What about Yahoo Answers? I hate seeing their results show up in the top 3 when I do a Google search. They're always low quality and not useful.

It's free content, and they can sell ads on it. Personally, I'd love to own it.

And to add to that, I think Yahoo's biggest mistake with Answers, and a lot of their other properties, was to put them on subdomains.

Their value would be a lot higher if they could seamlessly transfer ownership of the property. Rebranding costs users.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#106

Post by throwawayukcyb »

sanarothe wrote: post #18
AznHisoka wrote: post #6

What about Yahoo Answers? I hate seeing their results show up in the top 3 when I do a Google search. They're always low quality and not useful.

Fun fact: practically every assigned problem in undergrad chemistry, physics and math is solved on yahoo answers.

I can't speak for chemistry or physics, but that must be an incredibly poor mathematics program? I can't remember seeing anything past calc on yahoo answers and those answers were almost always wrong, or correct but with wrong explanations.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#107

Post by jonknee »

hga wrote: post #94
jonknee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "turnaround CEO" with no CEO or turnaround experience is rich. She is a famous person and that's about the extent of her qualification for a $100m pay package.

Yeah, that's the first place where the "in theory" ran into the hard problems of practice. On the other hand, in this narrow sub-domain of "high tech", how many turnaround experts are there? Worse, even with the "$100m pay package", how many of them, or just plain CEOs with some experience in with adversary, would be willing to take on the job? Maybe she was about the best they could get.

Hindsight is 20/20, but a boring finance type would have been a much better choice. With the huge Alibaba stake it was a dream position for an MBA type. A pet rock could have been CEO and the stock would have kept up fine because of the BABA shares.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#108

Post by skewart »

henrikschroder wrote: post #72
smegel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be the point of building a social network for Yahoo? Better engagement? Maybe just more engagement. People spend a hell of a lot of time on Facebook. I am thinking a social networking site like Facebook, combined with a mobile app that not only acts as a client to the social network, but also emulates the easy sharing features of instagram/snapshat/periscope. Something the younger generation will want to…

> the hardest thing about building a social network is getting users Going by the trainwreck that was Google+, I think you're completely wrong on this one.

I disagree. There's a big difference between "users" and active, engaged users. Google+ may have had a lot of users on paper, but relatively few people actually spent much time using it.

The hard part about building a social network for a company like Google, or even Yahoo, isn't getting user accounts. It's making something that people actually want to use.

Re: Yahoo is shutting down about half of its content verticals

#109

Post by derefr »

stormbrew wrote: post #101
derefr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've already got Tumblr; they just need to... do something, anything at all with it, rather than just letting it sit there. Integrate Yahoo's various news properties into the feed, and vice-versa. Make all of the commenting on every Yahoo property into gradual-engagement reblogs on a Tumblr blog you're not even realizing you're creating as you're creating it. Etc.

This would be a disaster of epic proportions. Tumblr has a rabid user base that's not interested in any of that and would scream bloody murder if it happened.

Does that matter? Those users aren't paying. Yahoo could very well kick 9/10ths of Tumblr's userbase off the site while retooling to make a profit from the other 10%, and it wouldn't change a single thing about their financials.

To put it another way: right now, Tumblr is making no money for Yahoo. Destroying the site and its reputation to make it into something profitable is actually the sensible move, compared to just leaving it alone. If they just wanted to leave it alone... why did they acquire it?

To go even further, though, I don't think they need any of Tumblr's current userbase. When I said that "Yahoo has a social network: Tumblr", I wasn't referring to the userbase, but to the codebase and the built-up staffing with social-network-running expertise. They could throw out Tumblr-the-website, and transfer all the people working on it to a new, fresh-from-scratch social network project (maybe built on Tumblr-the-backend), and it'd still be a more sensible strategy than leaving it alone.

Post reply on HN